Sweden was right to keep schools open.

The Nordic country’s controversial decision to keep most schools open has been proven correct.

In March 2020, as countries around the world shuttered their schools, Sweden chose to keep schools open with compulsory attendance for children under 16. There were a variety of reasons for the decision:

“It is not possible to just close schools without knowing where the children are going — for both social, psychological but also infection prevention reasons,” the Public Health Agency’s general director Johan Carlson said in March. “Many parents with important jobs for society, for example those working in healthcare and welfare would have to stay at home with their children. It is not possible at the moment to replace the parents with the grandparents, which is perhaps otherwise common.”

Let’s unpack:

1. Children need to attend schools for both social and psychological reasons, according to the Swedish Public Health Agency’s former general director. WHO Europe wrote in a June 2021 report: “Schools deliver essential functions beyond education that cannot be delivered online, including the opportunity for real-life interactions with peers, which is essential for healthy development. Online teaching therefore remains a suboptimal alternative.”
2. There are “infection prevention reasons” for children to keep attending school during the pandemic, because school is a structured environment where…